Content and news by Rob Williams

Most companies stick to one product-type, which can be a good plan or a real bad idea. For most hardware companies, such as OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin and the like, branching out is a smart move since it targets more people than just the usual hardware-enthusiast crowd. Sometimes, though, companies will develop a product so unique, it almost doesn’t even have a proper category to fit under.

One such product is OCZ’s Neural Impulse Actuator, a headband that reads electrical impulses in various frequency ranges and in theory, converts those to something that the computer will interpret with the help of custom-built software that utilizes DirectX to help process the inputs. So, it sounds like one of the weirdest products ever, but according to many who’ve used it, it actually works better than you’d think. Of course the most important thing, though, is that it really proves you know fashion.

Tech Report’s Scott Wasson, Photo: HotHardware

We are still clearly in the very early stages of this technology’s development, if it is to become a broadly useful form of input and control. Even with an experienced user like Dr. Schuette, the directional controls appeared to work in a fairly rudimentary fashion. As a result, I’m skeptical about this device’s immediate utility as a gaming controller.

Source: Tech Report

It’s not too often we can publish good news that actually has to do with legalities, but today is the day. It’s been proposed for some time that Canadian’s should be charged a secret “tax” on a media player purchase, such as an iPod. Buying the highest-end iPod would result in a ~$75 added tax, which is truly asinine. Such a move would be like suing someone who saved your life because they bruised you when pushing you out of the way of a moving car.

No need to rant though, since the idea has been officially dropped. Despite this “win”, it still goes without saying that things could change with regards to other hidden taxes. Canadians already pay a secret tax on blank media, due to potential piracy, and measures are still being pushed to tax purchasers of legal downloadable music. There’s an oxymoron for you.

Technology companies largely stand opposed to such levies, as they are seen as driving prices up and hurting competition, while giving markets in places without levies (like the US) an unfair advantage. Meanwhile, consumers wonder why they need to pay a $75 tax on a 30GB+ music player if they’ve done nothing wrong.

Source: Ars Technica

Growing up, I played a lot of games, including Zelda for the NES straight through to Ocarina of Time. But, I never thought to use my addiction for some good, like these folks did. The premise is simple: Play through four Zelda games in a 48-hour period while raising money for charity.

The run is now over and the charity of choice was Child’s Play, one that donates toys to children in hospitals, all donated by you. It’s a great cause and one that earns itself a lot of well-deserved popularity. During a press event last week, Will Smith, of Maximum PC, won a PC-building contest which resulted in a $10,000 donation to his favorite charity. That charity, of course, being Child’s Play.

You can read the entire run-down of how things went on the official blog. When all said and done, $1,150 was raised over the course of the weekend – a great result considering it was all gained from PLAYING GAMES.

But this weekend wasn’t about us, the e-mails, or even the sweet limericks. Instead, it was about how a love for something as simple as a couple of video games can pull together the masses and raise over $1150 to help a bunch of kids through a kickass charity such as Child’s Play.

Source: Cameron Banga, Via: Kotaku

After last weeks resignation of Warner Brothers from the HD DVD camp, things have not been smooth for Toshiba. It’s at this point when things are beginning to look really bad for HD DVD, but Toshiba has no intentions of going down without a fight, so naturally, price-drops were in order.

The 1080i-capable HD-A3 player now retails for $139.98 at Amazon, while the HD-A30 (1080p-capable) retails for $179.98. Both are great prices when you consider that the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 retails for the same price as the larger model. But at least here, you have a full-fledged set top box, instead of an ugly add-on.

Is this going to be enough to help Toshiba hold on? It’s hard to say, but if anyone else pulls out from the HD DVD camp, then things are destined for ruin. It’s going to be a very interesting next few months.

Amazon isn’t the only retailer with the discounted pricing, however. Tiger Direct is selling the HD-A3 for $129.99 and the HD-A30 for $179.99. There are also reports that Sam’s Club and Costco are selling the HD-A3 for as little as $128. In addition to the lower prices, customers who purchase Toshiba’s HD DVD players are still eligible to receive five free movies via a mail-in rebate — this is addition to the two movies, 300 and The Bourne Identity, which come in the box.

Source: DailyTech

As the record industry continues to shoot itself in the foot, the outlook for the compact disc continues to grow far worse. According to EMI, sales of their albums have dwindled by 20% in the past year, and as a result, they are laying off 2,000 of their employees to help cut costs. They also plan to devote less money towards marketing for any given album in order to keep costs to a minimum.

EMI hopes that with these changes, they will increase profits by £100m by this summer – a lofty goal indeed. Despite not agreeing with most of what the record industry does, I hate to see the reality of a dwindling compact disc. No one really knows how things will be in the next five years, but given these recent trends, they will be far different than they are now.

As difficult as the cuts will be for EMI’s workforce, they’re not a shock. Every EMI employee knew that they’ve been part of Hands’ plans since his Terra Firma p.e. group bought the company last summer. And from an outsider’s perspective, they seem rational given the state of big music. When EMI released its last quarterly earnings report in August, it disclosed that CD sales had dropped 20%, and those numbers could get worse over the next few years.

Source: Alley Insider

Microsoft should purchase Yahoo!, or should they? That is the question. Ars Technica takes a quick look at the facts and come to the conclusion that a merger would be a bad idea. It all depends at how you look at it, though. Microsoft could use help right now, and purchasing Yahoo! would no doubt give them a small boost (well, large), but the biggest issue right now for them is that Yahoo! doesn’t give any indication of wanting to be bought.

Another counter-point is this: Yahoo! is doing well enough on it’s own. According to various website trackers, Yahoo! is still the top site in the world (including it’s various subdomains), followed by Google and finally Microsoft. Their stature doesn’t represent that of one which needs help. But, Google is quickly becoming a world ruler and larger competition against them sure wouldn’t be a bad thing.

And Yahoo might not even want to be bought. I happen to believe that things are looking up now that co-founder Jerry Yang is acting CEO for a while. Yang seems to understand that Yahoo’s greatest strength lies in the community it has built around a massive user base, and Terry Semel never looked like he got that.

Source: Ars Technica

Sure, the tech is great, but one of the coolest areas of CES was the North Hall, where all of the cars, car audio and babes were found. We found over fifty sweet rides through our travels and have pictures of each – everything from modest classics to the latest exotics.

After months and months, and months, of waiting for the next major version of KDE, 4.0 was released last Friday. Like a launch of any major piece of software, there were mixed reactions regarding what’s new and how the updated environment is presented. Personally, I am going to hold off. I’ve been…..

Due to our CES attendance last week, I was unable to keep up with our daily hardware roundup. Although I am not going to include all four-hundred reviews/articles that were found in the news box upon my return, I am including a collection of the ones that caught my eye.

Motherboards & Processors
• GIGABYTE X48-DQ6 – TweakTown

Displays & Video Cards
• NVIDIA Hybrid SLI and 700a Series Preview – HotHardware

Memory & Storage
• Kingston Media Reader Hi-Speed 19-in-1 Card Reader – DragonSteelMods
• Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500GB – Digital Trends
• OCZ 2x1GB DDR3-1333 Gold Edition – Virtual-Hideout
• QNAP TS-109 Turbo Station NAS – Neoseeker
• Super Talent PC14400 1800Mhz DDR3 2GB – TweakNews

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Adesso WKB-3000UB Wireless Trackball Keyboard – Techware Labs
• SteelSeries SP Mousepad – XS Reviews

Cooling
• ASUS Silent Knight II CPU Cooler – Virtual-Hideout
• Glacialtech Igloo 5750 PWM Heatsink – FrostyTech
• OCZ Vendetta Exposed Heatpipe-Base Heatsink – FrostyTech
• Sunbeamtech Freezing Storm – BurnoutPC
• Thermalright Ultima-90 – Overclockers Online
• Tt Bigwater 760i Water Cooling Kit – Overclocker Cafe
• Zalman ZM-VFC2 Multi Fan Controller- OCModShop

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Antec P182 – SweMOD
• Antec TruePower Quattro 1000W – SweMOD
• Corsair TX750W Power Supply – Bjorn3D
• In Win Allure mATX Case – Hardware Canucks
• NZXT Rogue – Benchmark Reviews
• Thermaltake Armor+ – Bjorn3D
• Thermaltake SwordM Full Tower Case – TweakNews
• Ultra X2 750W Modular Power Supply – 3D Gameman

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• CES 2008: Antec – Think Computers
• CES 2008: CSX Cases by Cooler Master – Hardware Secrets
• CES 2008: Lenovo Launches A Trio Of New IdeaPads, Hands-on – HotHardware
• CES 2008: OCZ Technology – ClubOC
• Goldmund’s Media Room: A Dream For Audiophiles – Phoronix
• SplashTop Running On Prototype ASUS Notebook – Phoronix

We caught up with DeviceVM at CES to see what’s new with their Splashtop embedded Linux environment, which we first saw on the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard. As we found out, development has been steady with many new features implemented and ready for deployment with notebooks.

Intel has just announced sixteen new 45nm-based CPU offerings, but the desktop Quad-Cores will have to wait for actual launch until “sometime” in Q1. Available this month are both the desktop and mobile Dual-Core units. Pricing and specs inside.

As the title would suggest, we are at CES 2008 and prepared to deliver the good information along to all of you as we discover it. While CES doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow, there are numerous pre-shows that occur on Saturday and Sunday, with arguably the best one happening later tonight, Pepcom’s Digital Experience.

We have bumped up our CES staff to four this year, so you can expect a steady stream of content from many different viewpoints. If you haven’t already, be sure to take a look at Greg’s look on the new Logitech announcements and also Nate’s take on the CES Unveiled official pre-show.

So stay tuned! In between all of the comped food and free beer, we will be sure to deliver the information you are looking for.

In what could be considered -the- definitive list for top freeware games of the year, Javet, a member of the TIGForums, takes a look at a slew of games from many different categories. When a category like “Best Game in a Small Window” is found, you know this has got to be one great list. Other categories include best sound, best browser game, best physics and even a best editor.

Popular freeware developer Nifflas has received some great recognition this past year in the gaming community and this list reflects that with him as the best developer – his game, Knytt Stories, receives the best puzzle game award. If you are looking for a new game to play, don’t hesitate to check out this list. I am really wishing a few of these were cross-platform though…

Source: TIGForums – Via: Kotaku

The “war” between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD has been debated ever since the two have existed, but as recent reports unveil, the war in itself might become a moot point in a few years. A new study from ABI Research notes that the high-def market will be worth $2 billion by 2012 and that a full 66% of that will consist of dual-format readers.

I had the same idea the other night when perusing Newegg. Though Blu-ray writers are still pricey, the dual-format readers retail for just under $300. That means you can have both HD DVD and Blu-ray content right from the comfort of your… computer chair. This same drive would have cost close to $700 earlier this year, and price-drops don’t look to slow down anytime soon.

There. The war is over. Kind of.

If ABI Research is correct, a market dominance by universal players will render the format war moot as consumers would not have reason to prefer one format over the other from a hardware perspective and it would reduce some of the competitive drive behind the competing formats to negotiate exclusives for one format over another is the majority of users could view both formats.

Source: DailyTech

The Apple rumor-train is in full speed with a leak of an upcoming sub-notebook that should be announced at Macworld – two weeks from now. Given the fact that the ASUS Eee and OLPC are performing incredibly well, it’s no surprise that Apple would want to push their own offering out as soon as possible. That fact in itself makes this rumor a bit believable.

According to the rumor, the initial sub-notebook will not include an optical drive, but rather offer one as an add-on. Since a sub-notebook is meant to be portable, this move actually makes sense. You can leave the drive home when it’s not needed, or take it if you do. While I am interested to see what Apple has in store, I can’t seem to shake the nagging assumption that it’s going to retail for twice what the competition goes for. Hopefully we will know in two weeks.

Apple is also said to be introducing more than one notebook revision at Macworld. What combination of Sub-Notebook, MacBook or MacBook Pro remains unknown, but we’ve heard that at least one of these new notebooks will incorporate a multi-touch trackpad. The possibility of a multi-touch trackpad has been suggested by both rumors and published patent applications but has not previously been explicitly confirmed.

Source: MacRumors

Popular torrent-tracking website, Mininova, has released a top ten list for movies and tv shows. While we don’t condone illegal file swapping, these numbers tell us two things. First is the blatant fact that there is a huge market here that the MPAA and television networks are not touching. Second is the fact that this list is probably close to the actual top ten list for those who actually watched the movies on the big screen and small screen as well.

Taking the top spot for movies is Transformers – not much of a surprise. The runner-ups were Knocked Up and Shooter… the latter being a title I’ve not even heard of. Yes, I need to get out more. On the TV shows side of things, Heroes took the lead with twice the downloads of number two, UK-based auto show Top Gear.

We made a list of the most downloaded movies and TV-shows of 2007, including the number of downloads the most popular torrents got on Mininova. Note that the actual download count is much higher since there are often more torrents for the same file, and there are more BitTorrent sites of course.

Source: Torrent Freak

If there is doubt that Apple is growing fast, then the little tidbit about their stock doubling in six months should be mentioned. It’s true. I recall back in June, prior to the iPhone launch, contemplating purchasing some stock because it was obvious that it would go up. I am not sure if anyone thought it would jump from $100 to $200 though.

Of course, I wasn’t alone in considering the purchase of some stock, so perhaps we should go kick ourselves in sync. That might make us feel better.

Nah.

Perhaps more significant than the staggering value is the rate at which Apple has reversed its fortunes. Shares are up more than 10x from where they were trading in mid-2003, when the iPod was just starting to get hot and the PC market was still dominated by the likes of Dell and HP. Since then, Apple has been able to leverage its hot brand to improve sales across the board, with sales of Macs rising 34 percent in the most recent quarter.

Source: Mashable

From the “someone has far too much time on their hands” file comes a Halo 3 suicide that is as good as they get. It’s being considered “epic” and I will be not disagree. I know I know… you watch game videos all day and assume nothing good will be had from this one. Well, I always feel the same way and still laughed out loud… so go ahead, watch it.

We seriously want to know how long it took Halo 3 player, alias Evilmidget25, to build and prepare this evil contraption. We blame a childhood consisting of nothing but Mouse Trap, The Incredible Machine and the Marquis de Sade. Today’s word of the day is ‘Grenadicide.’

Source: Joystiq

Turtle Beach is back with a new gaming headset, the USB based AK-R8. Unlike the HPA series, the AK-R8 includes its own sound card. On top of that, the software is robust, the feature set is solid and the sound can get LOUD. These headphones might just be what you are looking for.

According to industry news site DigiTimes, AMD has plans to delay their upcoming Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors from Q1 2008 to Q2 2008. Reasons are supposedly linked to the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) issue – one that they’ve been unable to solve without the use of a performance-reducing BIOS patch.

They delay in itself of these models won’t affect many, however if these processors are indeed to be delayed, then we may find the “TLB-Patched” 9400-9600 models that were supposed to also hit in Q1 to be delayed as well. If that’s the case, then it’s going to be even more bad news for AMD, as many people who planned on picking up a Phenom CPU had intentions of waiting until the issue was fixed.

However, whether AMD’s triple-core Toliman series CPUs will also see delay will be the key decision for the company, since Toliman offers a high price/performance ratio compared with Intel’s quad-core CPUs. A delay for Toliman will hurt AMD the most, noted the sources.

Source: DigiTimes